A powerful, moving and exquisite short story collection, published posthumously, from the bestselling and prize-winning author Helen Dunmore
Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, children's author and
poet who will be remembered for the depth and breadth of her
fiction. Rich and intricate, yet narrated with a deceptive
simplicity that made all of her work accessible and heartfelt, her
writing stood out for the fluidity and lyricism of her prose, and
her extraordinary ability to capture the presence of the past.
Her first novel, Zennor in Darkness, explored the events which led
D. H. Lawrence to be expelled from Cornwall on suspicion of spying,
and won the McKitterick Prize. Her third novel, A Spell of Winter,
won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and she went on
to become a Sunday Times bestseller with The Siege, which was
described by Antony Beevor as a 'world-class novel' and was
shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange
Prize. Published in 2010, her eleventh novel, The Betrayal, was
longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Orwell
Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Lie in 2014 was
shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and
the 2015 RSL Ondaatje Prize.
Her final novel, Birdcage Walk, deals with legacy and recognition -
what writers, especially women writers, can expect to leave behind
them - and was described by the Observer as 'the finest novel Helen
Dunmore has written'. She died in June 2017, and in January 2018,
she was posthumously awarded the Costa Prize for her volume of
poetry, Inside the Wave.
This posthumous collection from the much-loved author, focusing on
motherhood, war and women under threat, is an act of tender
commemoration… there are new departures on the themes that
preoccupied Dunmore: childhood, motherhood, war, friendship,
forgotten lives.
*Guardian – Book of the Week*
Wisdom and wit shine out from Helen Dunmore’s last stories…The
simplicity of the writing is deceptive; Dunmore manages to say a
lot about families, about the mystery of creativity, and the shock
of seeing someone you thought you knew in a new light.
*The Times*
Dunmore’s gift for period detail combines with the respect she has
for her characters’ inner lives to produce an effect that is oddly
moving.
*Sunday Times*
Dunmore’s love of history glints and gleams in this elegant,
posthumous collection
*The Daily Mail*
Whether musing on a portrait of John Donne or a friendship between
two widows, the late, much missed Dunmore always has something
worth saying
*Mail on Sunday, Event – Summer Reads*
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